Stolen child of slain woman was living 2 miles away / Family jubilant over discovery of boy missing for 6 years

Kelly St. John, Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writers

Published
4:00 am PST, Sunday, December 8, 2002

The family of Daphne Boyden 17 when she was murdered and her two week old son Le-Zhan Williams was kidnapped. Celebrated the fact that Le-Zhan was found . Henrietta Williams grandmother ,Riva Lee Boyden Great Grandmother and Jessica Knox God mother. Photo By Kurt Rogers less

The family of Daphne Boyden 17 when she was murdered and her two week old son Le-Zhan Williams was kidnapped. Celebrated the fact that Le-Zhan was found . Henrietta Williams grandmother ,Riva Lee Boyden Great ... more

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

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The family of Daphne Boyden 17 when she was murdered and her two week old son Le-Zhan Williams was kidnapped. Celebrated the fact that Le-Zhan was found . Henrietta Williams grandmother ,Riva Lee Boyden Great Grandmother and Jessica Knox God mother. Photo By Kurt Rogers less

The family of Daphne Boyden 17 when she was murdered and her two week old son Le-Zhan Williams was kidnapped. Celebrated the fact that Le-Zhan was found . Henrietta Williams grandmother ,Riva Lee Boyden Great ... more

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Stolen child of slain woman was living 2 miles away / Family jubilant over discovery of boy missing for 6 years

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A Vallejo rap artist's son who was stolen as a 4-week-old infant after kidnappers killed his mother six years ago was apparently living within two miles of the home he had been snatched from.

"It was unbelievable. He's been right under our noses," said Capt. JoAnn West, a spokeswoman for the Vallejo Police Department, which found Le-Zhan Williams on Friday. "No one ever really thought we'd be able to recover this child."

No one, that is, except for Le-Zhan's relatives, who gathered Saturday morning to celebrate a day they prayed would come.

RELATIVES CLUNG TO HOPE

"Not for a moment did we think that the baby was dead," said Le-Zhan's grandmother, Henrietta Williams, 51. She smiled and clutched the key chain featuring a picture of Le-Zhan as an infant and his birth date -- April 22, 1996 -- that she has carried with her for six years. "We never gave up hope."

Acting on an anonymous tip they received Vallejo police turned their attention to Latasha Brown, 22, who was raising a 6-year-old boy attending school in Vallejo. West said medical records proved Brown was not pregnant at the time of the boy's birth.

Brown was arrested Thursday after Vallejo police officers and FBI agents boarded a bus that was returning to Vallejo from Sacramento, West said. Brown had taken the boy to Sacramento to stay at a friend's house and "did not seem surprised" when she was arrested, West said.

Brown is being held without bail in Solano County Jail on a warrant charging her with murder and kidnapping. Police also arrested her mother, Delores Ann Brown, 44, on suspicion of child concealment.

MORE ARRESTS POSSIBLE

West said investigators anticipate additional arrests and are searching for a second woman seen leaving the murder scene. They also are looking for any other accomplices who helped Brown conceal the crime.

"Certainly, we know that there may be many people who knew that she, at the very least, had a child who was not hers," West said. "It would make it much easier if they step forward."

Le-Zhan had been missing since May 17, 1996, when he was just 25 days old. His mother, 17-year-old Daphne Boyden, was killed in the home she shared with her grandmother, Riva Lee Boyden. Daphne Boyden's body was then set ablaze, and neighbors saw two girls carrying a small bundle as they left the house.

Police said Le-Zhan is in good health. He had been raised believing that Brown was his biological mother and was attending school in Vallejo. Le-Zhan remained in the custody of Child Protective Services, West said, and probably will not be reunited with his family for several days.

Authorities would not say what name Le-Zhan had been living under, or what school he had been attending. But according to property records, Le-Zhan apparently spent most of his childhood in Vallejo.

From 1996 until July 2001, both Latasha and Delores Ann Brown lived in a rented home on Platt Court, about two miles from the Boyden home in the 100 block of Rounds Street.

Last year, both Browns moved to a rented home in the 200 block of Larissa Lane, which also is about 2 miles from Rounds Street.

DNA SAMPLE COMPARISON

Police are now comparing a DNA sample taken from Le-Zhan to a sample collected when he was born. If the samples match, Le-Zhan will be reunited with his family.

Le-Zhan's father, Lathan Williams, 27, is a local rap singer of some note. Known as "Young Lay," he was dating Boyden at the time of her death. He also has another son, who is 5.

Williams was well-known in the Bay Area hip-hop music community but dropped out of the music scene after he got in legal trouble in the late 1990s, according to Web sites that chronicle the rap scene.

Williams was sentenced in November 1999 to 12 years in prison for armed robbery in Solano County, according to police sources. He was initially sent to Deuel Correctional Center in Tracy and then transferred to Susanville state prison in July 2000.

His father, Beneathes Williams Jr., said that his son apparently has not been told Le-Zhan has been found.

Police said that Brown may have had a relationship with Williams, and that envy prompted her to kill his girlfriend and take the child.

"There's some speculation that she had had a relationship with the father and had been jealous," West said.

But, West said, Brown was not a suspect until the anonymous tip came in Monday.

"We didn't know her," West said. "She was not a name that had come up in the investigation before."

Williams' parents said they had never met Brown.

RAPPER DAD

Williams has made two CDs. The first, "Black 'N Dangerous," was released in June 1996 -- just a few weeks after Le-Zhan was abducted. The song "All About My Fetti" appeared on the soundtrack to the film "New Jersey Drive."

His second album, "Unsolved Mysteries," was released in 1998 by Atlantic Records. It was devoted to his missing son and dead girlfriend. The title track features sound bites from an interview Williams granted the television program "Unsolved Mysteries," which featured the case of missing Le-Zhan.

Henrietta Williams said the segment was rebroadcast recently and may have prompted the anonymous tip.

KMEL radio DJ Davey D has chronicled Williams' rap career on his Web site "Bay Area Rap."

"He hit the scene with a blaze of glory," Davey D wrote. "('All About My Fetti') was a big hit here in the Bay and lots of other places around the country. This was the big break that Lay needed to start moving on up from the rough side of town."

Williams was a victim of violence himself.

Several months before Le-Zhan's abduction, Williams was shot in the head while stopped at traffic light in Vallejo. He was comatose for several days. Police never found the shooter.

"Lay's recovery was nothing short of a miracle, and the fact that he was able to return to the rap game and continue his climb was proof of God's continued blessings," Davey D wrote later that year. "People thought he was gonna pass on."

According to published reports, Williams also was stabbed repeatedly in an incident after Boyden's death.

Police considered the possibility that Williams' shooting and Boyden's death were linked but found nothing to link them. There were similar suspicions among his hip-hop friends.

"The train of thought behind this is that Young Lay's rapid rise within the music industry has caused intense jealousy from street rivals within Vallejo," Davey D wrote in 1996 a short time after Boyden's death.

Le-Zhan's relatives say they expect that a reunion with Le-Zhan will be difficult because Brown is the only mother that he has known.

"This is a child that has been raised by two females that he loves," said Le-Zhan's godmother, Jessica Knox, 42. Despite the fact that Brown is accused of slaying Knox's cousin Daphne, Knox said, "We're very thankful that they took care of Le-Zhan."